The Boss was the 22nd MusiCares honoree (David Crosby was the first). The audience honoring Springsteen Friday night and early Saturday morning included such previous MusiCares Person of the Year honorees as Sting, Young, John, Natalie Cole and Bonnie Raitt.

“He lives his life in an exemplary way,” Raitt said during a pre-dinner chat. She laughingly recalled when he was her show-stealing opening act at a 1973 club date, an event that led her to vow she would never follow him on stage again.

The audience included a number of past and present San Diegans, among them Grammy-winning troubadour Jason Mraz, his manager Bill Silva, bass great Nathan East and Joe Lamond, the CEO and president of the Carlsbad-based National Association of Music Merchants. Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder, who had been included in the original lieneup of performers, was an apparent no-show.

Serving as host for the evening was comic TV star Jon Stewart, a longtime fan, who – like Springsteen – is also a New Jersey native.

“There’s nothing he’d rather do than come to Los Angeles, put on a suit, be in a room that apparently has its own solar system and hear people talk about him like he’s dead.”

Stewart then recalled his own early years, working as a bartender in New Jersey, and how listening to Springsteen music as he drove home late at night from his job uplifted him. “I realized that I am not a loser,” Stewart said. “I am a character, in an epic poem, about losers.”

The concert opened with Best New Artist Grammy nominees Alabama Shakes ripping through a gritty, Memphis soul-styled version of “Adam Raised a Cain.” Patti Smith followed with “Because the night,” the 1978 song she and Springsteen co-wrote, which was her breakthrough hit. As Smith performed it, Springsteen and his wife, E Street Band singer Patti Scialfa, sang along at their table. At one point, Smith changed the line “Because the night belongs to lovers” to “Because the Night belongs to Bruce!”

The evening’s first misfire came when Ben Harper, Natalie Maines and blues harmonica dynamo Charlie Musselwhite delivered a low-key “Atlantic City.” Maines and Harper’s voices were a poor fit and they detracted from, rather than complimented, one another. (Springsteen later fondly recalled opening a show, early in his career, for Musselwhite in San Francisco “when I was my daughter’s age”.)

Emmylou Harris, a noted interpreter of The Boss’s songs, fell surprisingly flat with “My Hometown,” possibly because (like a majority of the night’s performers) she appeared to be reading the lyrics from a large screen at the rear of the venue.

Morello, a frequent guest guitarist at E Street Band shows over the past two years, stood out several times. The first was when he and Browne collaborated on a haunting rendition of “41 Shots (American Skin),” one of Springsteen’s most controversial (and least heard) songs. The second came when he and My Morning Jackets’ James ignited on “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” trading vocals and guitar solos that rose to a mighty crescendo.